


Roadtrip

by sunshineinthestorm



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Leo takes forever to return from Ogygia, Post-Series, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4688093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineinthestorm/pseuds/sunshineinthestorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Leo takes over a year to return to camp, he expects Piper and Jason to be furious... but what happens next is worse than that. They're happy to see him. They pick up right where they left off, like he'd never died. They joke with him, and they tease him, and they take him on a roadtrip.</p><p>And then they force him to explain why it took him so long to come home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Old Station Wagon and a Long Story

"I don't understand what's happening here," Leo admitted. "You want me to go on a roadtrip? With  _you_?"

"Well, yeah," Jason said, leaning forward as he sunk into the overstuffed bunk bed. "Isn't that what best friends do?"

"Sure," Leo said dubiously. "But I don't want to third-wheel your date with Piper."

"Leo, we're not—"

"Can it, Pipes." Leo sighed and pushed his right shirtsleeve up his forearm. "Look, it's nice of you guys to try to include me. But I see what you're doing here."

"What we're doing is asking you to travel with us—"

"Look, I know I haven't been back long, so you feel like you need to spend time with me," Leo cut in. "And it's nice of you. Really, it is. But I'm all grown-up now, and I don't need a couple extra moms, all right? You guys have obviously planned this trip out already, which means you probably intended it as a coupley thing before I got back. Plus maybe you think I'm still messed-up because Calypso's not with me anymore. Well, screw that. I'm not letting her ruin your extended date. Go have fun. I have too much work to do here anyway."

"Shut up, Leo," Piper said fiercely, slamming her hands against the bed post. "We might be dating, but we're also your friends, and we just got you back! You're coming. And if you expected that self-pitying look to convince us to leave you, you know even less about organic life forms than I thought."

"Besides, I'm no extra mom," Jason added, frowning. "You've been in the plans from the beginning, dude. We just waited to tell you until now so you wouldn't have a chance to back out on us."

"What? I—"

"I've already talked to Nyssa, Leo," Piper said, "and she says you're grossly over-exaggerating the amount of work you have to do, as usual. Get your butt out of bed, Repair Boy. We're going."

"But I—"

"Jake already packed you a bag and stuffed it in the back of the car," Piper proclaimed. "Now, no more excuses. Get your butt out of bed."

Leo darted his eyes between the two of them, looking for a way out. Then he sighed. "Fine. I'm coming."

* * *

"This was a horrible idea," Leo announced as the old station wagon sputtered to a stop on the side of a road. "I've been telling you since the beginning that this was a horrible idea. Why couldn't you just let us take Festus like I suggested?"

"We're trying to make this a Greek-mythology-free roadtrip, Leo," Piper reminded him. "We want to  _avoid_ attracting attention. Besides, Festus doesn't have the same aesthetic appeal as a trashy car with a staticky radio."

"He has plenty of 'aesthetic appeal'," Leo muttered. "He's a freaking bronze dragon." When no one responded, he just sighed and climbed out of the backseat. (He'd argued about the seating arrangement before getting into the car—"If you're going to drag me on this trip, can I at least ride shotgun?"—but it didn't have an effect on their stone-cold hearts.)

"Well?" Jason asked. "Do you know what's wrong with it?"

"I literally just got out of the car three seconds ago!"

"I thought children of Hephaestus could figure out what was wrong with something just by touching it," Piper teased.

"If that were true, Beauty Queen, I would have discovered your long list of problems the moment I accidentally punched you in the face during gym at the Wilderness School. Then I would have avoided you like the god of death himself, and we wouldn't be in this situation."

"More's the pity," Piper retorted.

Leo didn't have to look up from his engine inspection to know that Piper was batting her eyelashes and trying for an innocent face to earn his sympathy. "Stop it," he said, burying his arms elbow-deep in the hood of the car to start working. "You know that act only works on Jason."

"What? I'm not—"

" _Piper._ "

She sighed and slumped back against her headrest. "Yeah, yeah. Way to ruin my fun, Valdez."

A few minutes of silence. Then, "So do you know what's wrong with it  _now_?"

"Jason, I swear to all the gods—"

"I'm just wondering!"

It took all of Leo's self-control not to groan in annoyance. "Yes, Jason 'Maximum Pottyface' Grace, I know what's wrong with the car. And I could fix it a heck of a lot faster if you'd come out here and help me instead of making fun of me like the lowlife demigods you are."

Jason frowned. "I'm a Pontifex Maximus, Leo, not a . . . well, you know." But he got out of the car.

Laughing, Piper followed suit. "I have to say, Leo, that's one of your better nicknames."

Leo lifted one oil-greased hand long enough to tip an imaginary hat at her before submerging himself in the inner workings of the station wagon again. "I appreciate that, Beauty Queen. Now, will one of you please hand me the wire cutters?"

He held out his left hand for the item, but as soon as it touched his palm, he sighed loudly, never lifting his eyes from the car. "Those are  _pliers_ , Jason, you idiot. The wire cutters are freaking _labelled_ after that awkward incident with Harley the other day. Can't you read the  _labels_?"

"Oh. Sorry."

Leo scoffed with another retort ready on his lips, but he couldn't help feeling uncomfortable in their casual banter. It was so weird for them to act this normal around each other . . .

* * *

That night, Leo finally couldn't take it any longer. The three of them were settling into a moderately-seedy motel somewhere in Ohio (at least Leo was pretty sure it was Ohio) when he shoved aside some greasy pizza boxes and whirled on his friends. "Why are you being so nice to me?" he demanded.

"What? Leo, I—"

"I screwed up your lives!" Leo shouted. "I was gone for a freaking  _year_ , and I can't blame all that time on dying because it only took me like a month to recover from that, and then I went off and did some stupid Styx instead of flying back to camp. I let you go on thinking I was dead for a year—a  _year!_ And then I finally came back, and I expected yelling—I  _wanted_ yelling, and maybe worse—but instead you guys planned this stupid roadtrip and now you're acting completely normal and it's  _driving me insane!_ "

Piper gaped at him. "We're your friends, Leo. We figured you needed timee."

But time was the last thing Leo wanted at the moment. "No! I  _need_ you to be honest with me! Ever since I got back, you guys have acted like I never left, and I never died, and I never ignored you, and everything's normal. But it's  _not_ normal! Nothing is normal about this! And until I know how you guys feel, I can't start making up for all the crap I pulled!"

Jason dropped his pizza slice on the floor. "Do you really want to know what we think, Leo?"

"Yes!"

"Fine, then." Jason stood up, avoiding the smear of marinara sauce and slimy cheese on the carpet, and took a step towards Leo. "I can't speak for Piper, but I'll sure as Styx let you know what  _I_ think."

Piper reached out for Jason's arm, but he pushed her hand away and stared Leo down. "Do you have any idea how  _awful_ it is, not knowing what's happened to your best friend?"

Leo stiffened. "No."

"Well, then, let me enlighten you. It. Sucks." With each word, Jason poked a finger at Leo's chest. "We thought you were  _dead_ , Valdez! Oh, sure, we kept our hopes up for the first few months. Piper and I traded stories about you, pretending that keeping your memory alive would bring you back somehow. The day Nico burst into my cabin to tell me he couldn't feel your presence in the Underworld any longer . . . well, I cried. Piper cried. We all cried. We thought,  _Gods, Leo's coming back. He's alive. We'll see him again soon._  And then . . . we didn't."

Leo gulped. "Jason . . ."

"You asked for this, and now you're going to hear all of it," Jason said flatly. "We thought maybe you were injured. Maybe you were captured by monsters somewhere and needed us to help you. We sent out search parties all over the U.S., and most of us traveled through Rome and Greece at least once, hoping that maybe, just  _maybe_ , we'd find you somewhere, and you'd have a perfectly reasonable explanation for not coming to us earlier. But then we passed New Year's, and Percy and Annabeth were getting ready to head off to college, and Annabeth was helping me design fifty different shrines, one for each state, and Nico and Hazel started to doubt themselves. They thought they'd been so hopeful that you were alive that they'd imagined the feeling of you leaving the Underworld. We mourned you all over again, and we tried to move on. Piper and I celebrated our one-year anniversary three months late because we'd been too busy looking for you at the time. Frank and Hazel became Camp Jupiter's nicest power couple, and Hazel grew three inches so Frank couldn't tower over her quite as much anymore. Percy and Annabeth graduated high school, and Percy's mom cried. They moved to New Rome. We finally accepted that we were never going to see you alive again.

"And then September rolled around, and you swooped into camp on a badly-damaged Festus and diverted all our questions with smiles, jokes, and apologies." Jason clenched his fists, fourteen months of sadness pouring out of him in one long rant.

"And now you're standing there, telling me that  _we're_ the ones who've been acting like nothing's changed!  _You're_ the one who wouldn't tell us a single thing about your year! You're the one who wouldn't tell us what had happened to you! And excuse me if this sounds crazy, but we thought maybe you didn't want to think about something painful! Maybe you wanted your space! So we kept up appearances for your sake, and we didn't even mind all that much because gods of Olympus, Leo,  _you were back,_ and that was all that really mattered, right?"

At this point, Piper was standing next to him, shaking. "We planned this roadtrip for  _you,_  asshole," she spit out, clutching the alarm clock on the room's wobbly end table for support. "We figured that you spent three weeks in New York, and it didn't make you tell us anything. So maybe spending time with us alone, away from all the curious people at camp, might make you ready to open up. We did this because we wanted to be here for you; we  _always_ want to be here for you. But I have to say that you're making it stupidly difficult."

They stood there, chests heaving, and waited for Leo to respond. But when he did, all he said was, "Are you done?"

Piper nearly lost it all over again. "There's no need to be  _snarky,_ you gorgon-loving son of a—"

"No, that's not what I meant!" Leo spluttered. "I just . . . that's all you have to say to me? Don't you want me to tell you how pissed you are that I was gone for so long?"

"Well, sure, but—"

"Don't you want to tell me that I was a selfish bastard for not letting you know where I was?"

Piper frowned. "Leo, we just—"

" _Can't you say that I don't deserve to live after watching Calypso die?_ "

Piper dropped the alarm clock, and it clattered onto the end table. Immediately, it started blinking and beeping and playing some fuzzy country music station. "Oh, Styx, Styx, I didn't . . . Sorry . . ." Piper spent five minutes trying to get the alarm clock to stop, and then she finally gave up and hurled it across the room, cord and all. It crashed against the desk in the corner, and the top cracked off, and finally,  _finally_ , the damn thing stopped making noise. Only then did Piper look up and realize that Leo's shoulders were shaking. "Oh, gods, Leo—"

But Leo was already backing away from them, hoisting himself onto the desk, and rubbing furiously at his eyes. "It's nothing, Beauty Queen. I was just laughing at that dumb alarm clock, that's all."

If Piper had had another alarm clock, she would've thrown it too. "Don't even try to use that on me, Valdez," she announced, marching towards him. "We're too far into this to stop now."

Leo sniffled, still trying to keep up a smile. "Yeah, you're probably right."

Jason nodded. "So?"

"So, what?"

"So, what the hell, Leo! We didn't know that about Calypso!"

Leo froze. "What? I totally told you."

"Don't even start," Piper sighed. "You always said she was 'lost' or that she'd 'left' you. We thought you two had been flying around Florence or something, and she found a boy who was hotter than you and ran off."

"Oh." Leo's hands were shaking, which wasn't unusual for the ADHD demigod, but Piper could tell they were worse than usual. He tried to press them against the top of the desk, but that just made his entire arm shiver. Finally, he just gave up and pointed them palms-up toward Piper and Jason, like a peace offering. "I'm sorry. I guess . . . I guess I just didn't really want to think about it."

Piper inched closer to him and held onto one of his hands with both of her own, absorbing the shaking with her own body. After a moment, Jason came forward and did the same thing with Leo's other hand. "Are you okay to think about it now?" she asked hesitantly. "Or should we act like nothing's wrong for a few more days?"

"No, no, I . . ." Leo let out a laugh that was closer to a shudder. "Secret's out now. I might as well tell you everything."

"Everything?" Piper held her breath. This was the first time Leo had said more than a few words about the time he'd been missing. She didn't want to scare him off.

"Everything," Leo sighed. "But . . . but try not to interrupt until I finish, okay? This is going to be hard enough as it is."

Slowly, Piper and Jason nodded. "Go ahead, dude," Jason said carefully. "Start whenever and wherever you'd like."

Leo shuddered again, but this time, Piper and Jason were there to hold him steady. "I guess I'll start at the beginning. I mean, there isn't all that much to tell anyway.

"The worst part is that Calypso was so eager to be free. When I woke up—after being dead, I mean—Festus told me we were almost to Ogygia. And I thought, If I wait five minutes to call you, Ogygia's position might shift, and I might not find her again for days, maybe weeks. So I did the selfish thing. I went straight to Ogygia. And when I got there, Calypso was on the beach, waiting for me. She had her bags all packed and everything, and gods, you should have seen the way her eyes glistened.

"I told her I had been dead, but I was better now, and she told me . . . she told me she was ready to leave Ogygia with me and never come back. I had no idea how long I'd been gone. I didn't know if you guys were still alive, or if I'd been dead for close to forever and I didn't have any friends or family to come back to anymore. But I knew I had Calypso, so I did the selfish thing and focused on her first.

"I asked her if she cared that she might not remain immortal outside of Ogygia, and she said she didn't. I asked if she minded that I didn't have a plan, and she told me she didn't give a Styx. I asked her if I could take her bags so we could leave, and she said, 'Absolutely.'"

Leo gulped. There was no stopping his shaking hands now—his whole  _body_ was shaking. "Absolutely, she told me . . . Oh, gods. She didn't know what she was getting into."

He almost chickened out right then, but Leo bit down on his cheek to force himself to continue. "There's this barrier around Ogygia, you know. It's the thing that makes time act weird and kept Calypso from leaving. I thought . . . Oh, I don't know what I thought. I guess I thought that maybe my return meant that the magic around Ogygia was weakening. Maybe the gods had finally remembered their promise to Percy to let Calypso go free. Or maybe I was stupid and reckless because I had just returned from the dead and found an unfindable island. Either way, I figured we were good to go. But as soon as we passed through that barrier, Calypso collapsed against me, and somehow I knew it wasn't just from flight sickness."

Jason stared at him with worried eyes. Piper clapped a hand over her mouth and whispered, "Oh,  _Leo_." Leo knew they wouldn't be angry if he gave into the tears burning in his eyes, if he stopped gnawing the inside of his cheek and let himself break down. But  _he_ would be angry with  _himself._  He knew that if he stopped talking now, he wouldn't find the courage to start again. So he bit his cheek harder and kept going.

"I turned Festus around immediately and tried to fly back to Ogygia, but—but the island was gone. Not so much as a single wind spirit was left. So I whirled around again and directed Festus toward the nearest land, and I told Calypso everything was going to be fine, just in case she could hear me.

"We landed eventually—probably faster than I'm giving Festus credit for, but my sense of time was a little off-kilter then—and I pulled Calypso off Festus and prayed to every god I knew that she would be all right.

"She held on for a long time. I fed her ambrosia and nectar and regular old mortal food too—she'd packed some in her bags, my stupid amazing prepared-for-anything girlfriend—and for a while I thought it was helping. But, well . . . you already know the punchline. I died and came back, and it gave me so much confidence that I figured I could cheat death as much as I wanted. But no one cheats death forever."

Leo sighed. "I tried to blame myself all through those days, but she wouldn't let me. She kept promising that she was too impatient, she was too fixated on breaking her curse and getting off that damned island, and she forgot the most obvious part of her curse—it couldn't be broken. She was so nice to me, it was sickening. All the time, I wished that she'd yell at me more. It would have made me believe she'd survive her . . . whatever was happening to her. But whenever she said something weirdly affectionate, I knew I was just kidding myself."

Sometime during the story, Leo's hands had stopped shaking, but Piper and Jason were still holding onto them and watching him with concern and sympathy. As embarrassed as he was to admit it, Leo was glad they hadn't let go. He wasn't sure he could get through the rest of the story if they did.

"I don't know when she died, exactly," Leo admitted, looking down at their hands. "I didn't even know how long I'd been dead before the physician's cure had kicked in, so I figured keeping track of days was pointless. I thought about calling you all a lot, but I was so afraid that if I left Calypso for a moment, she'd die and it'd be my fault. Of course . . . in the end none of that mattered. It was my fault anyway, for making her a promise I couldn't keep. Calypso told me she didn't care if leaving the island sapped her immortality, but I doubt she thought that meant she'd have to . . . to die as soon as she did."

Piper sandwiched Leo's hand between hers and eyed him carefully. "How long?" she whispered. All her anger from before had bled out of her right along with Leo's story, but she still needed to know. "How much time passed between then and when you showed up at camp?"

"I . . . about eight months, I think," Leo muttered, shifting uncomfortably. "I kept telling myself to call you guys, but I, um, wasn't in a good place. I didn't . . ." He sighed. "It sounds stupid, but I knew you probably thought I was dead. The first time you saw me again, I didn't want you to see me as an emotional wreck. So . . . I didn't call."

"For  _eight months_?" Jason spluttered before he could help himself.

"I thought I was okay after the first two," Leo admitted, "but then I had to repair Festus, and every time I hammered on a sheet of Celestial bronze or twisted a stupid bronze coil, I remembered the time Calypso and I built the navigation system that led me to Malta, and I, uh, kind of lost it. And as if that wasn't bad enough, I also had to deal with all the physician's cure's side effects."

" _Side effects_?" Piper and Jason yelled in unison.

Leo stared at them and gulped. "Oh, it was nothing, really," he said hastily. "Calling them 'side effects' is probably an exaggeration."

"Leo!"

But Leo just shrugged his shoulders and looked at the ground. This was his chance. He could tell them about the times he went to sleep and found himself back in the Underworld, waiting to be judged alongside thousands of other lost souls. He could mention the day he was adjusting Festus's wiring and suddenly his hands froze, he couldn't move his eyes, and worst of all . . . he didn't think his heart was beating. Leo wasn't sure how long he'd sat there, sure he was dead but with his soul stuck inside his body, before his pulse hammered in his eardrums again, but it was long enough to terrify him for the next week. And then four weeks later, his heart stopped beating again.

Yes, Leo  _could_ tell Piper and Jason about all those moments . . . but why scare them? That hadn't happened to him for a couple months, so it was possible that his side effects had run their course. And if they hadn't, and Piper and Jason were around when it happened again—well, he could tell them then. But in the meantime, he'd keep that particular problem to himself. There were some things his friends really didn't need to know.

"Leo," Piper repeated, snapping Leo out of his thoughts. " _What do you mean by side effects?_ "

" _I don't want to talk about it, okay?!_ " Leo took a deep breath. "I . . . I'll give you more details eventually if you really want to hear them, but . . . but I don't want to talk about it right now. I'm sorry. I know you guys deserve better than that, but I just—"

"No, Leo, it's okay," Piper cut in, tugging him into an embrace before Leo could think to resist. (Not that he would have, even if he'd realized what was happening.)

After a moment of hesitation, Jason leaned in and joined the hug. "Gods, Leo,  _I'm_ sorry. We figured you'd spent a year gallivanting around the world with Calypso and leaving us in the dark, but that wasn't true at all. We weren't even sure . . . gods, were you really dead for a  _month_ before the physician's cure kicked in? You hadn't even told us that much before today."

Leo shrugged again, but he didn't try to pull away. "That's my best guess, anyway. Like I said, I didn't keep track of time all that well. Now . . . um, now that you know, you're probably going to insist that we cancel this roadtrip, right? We should return to camp, tell Chiron about what happened to me, make sure I'm not psychologically distressed . . ."

He trailed off when he saw Piper grinning at him. "Oh, so you  _want_ to go on this roadtrip now?"

Leo scrunched up his nose at her. "Yeah, yeah, Beauty Queen. What can I say? I'm starting to see the aesthetic appeal of a crappy car with an equally-crappy engine. It'll give me something to fix while we drive off to—uh, where are we going, exactly?"

A smile inched across Jason's face, stretching his scar. "Oh, nowhere special. Just California. The rest of the seven missed you too, you know."

Leo would've toppled off the desk if his friends hadn't caught him. "But—I destroyed half of New Rome! I ruined their Senate house! They hate me!"

Piper snorted. "It's funny, but they changed their opinions of you after you destroyed the evil goddess that had threatened all of Western civilization. Suddenly, everyone started regarding you as a hero."

He raised his eyebrows. "A hero, huh?"

Piper reeled back and smacked his shoulder. "Shut up, Valdez, or we'll take you back to camp after all."

"Aw, you wouldn't do that, would you? We're going to have a great time on the road together! We can eat fantastically bad pizza and listen to awful music! When our car breaks down every other mile, it'll be a great bonding opportunity!"

Piper sighed dramatically. "Oh, Jason, what did we get ourselves into?"

Leo just laughed. He hadn't felt this close to okay in a year. Maybe this roadtrip  _would_ be a good vacation after all.


	2. Mother Nature

"Come on, Seaweed Brain, think of it as an experience. Out in the wild, enjoying the beauty of Mother Nature."

Percy glared at her. "After the summer we had last year, I have zero desire to hang out with Mother Nature. I would be perfectly happy if we never interacted with her again."

Leo leaned back, trying (and failing) to balance a stick on the end of his nose. "Dude, nobody's saying Old Dirt Face is going to show up. We're stranded in the middle of the woods, man! It's the perfect opportunity to search for a higher plane of existence. Rub some mud on your face and eat some leaves. Contemplate the meaning of life. Become one with the universe."

Percy frowned. "Someone offered me the chance to join a higher plane of existence once. I thought it sounded overrated."

"Come on, Percy, lighten up," Frank sighed. "You're usually one of the less anxious people in this group. Shouldn't you at least be happy nobody is trying to kill us?"

"The only reason nobody is trying to kill us," Percy pointed out, "is that we just killed all the monsters who were. And running away from them led us into a weird part of this weirdo forest and now we're completely lost."

"We're the seven heroes of Olympus," Leo declared, throwing his arms wide. "We don't get lost."

"Actually, we're pretty lost," Annabeth admitted. "I'm just choosing to look on the bright side."

"See, even Annabeth is looking on the bright side!" Leo gasped, staggering back and slapping a hand against his forehead. "How can you be so unhappy? This role reversal is frying my brain circuits. Does... Not... Compute..." He leaned over and let his arms swing freely, like a robot that had just shut down.

Percy didn't bother responding, just looked at Leo with another frown. When Piper and Jason had IM'ed to let everyone know they were coming, this was not what they had warned the rest of the seven to expect.

Of course, Percy couldn't blame the guy for going overboard with the jokes. After all, joking had been Percy's coping mechanism too, after the war. In fact, it had been his coping mechanism as soon as he got out of Tartarus. Make jokes, and people won't worry about you. That was what he had figured. And for a while, it had worked - until Annabeth saw through him, of course, just like she always did.

"It's getting pretty late," Jason said eventually, frowning at the hint of deep purple sky visible through the trees. "There's no way we're going to find our way back to Camp Jupiter in the dark."

"Not in these woods," Piper agreed, flicking a branch as she walked. "How many monsters have we encountered since we got in here? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?"

"Too many," Frank grumbled. "And that was before it got dark."

"Maybe monsters are scared of the dark," Leo suggested. "I mean, it's pretty sketchy out here."

Without blinking, Piper reached out and smacked Leo in the back of his head. "Don't be an idiot."

"Too late for that," he said cheerfully.

"Okay, enough," Annabeth said. "If we keep walking around in the dark, we'll just get more lost. We might as well stop for the night, try to find something to eat, and start looking again in the morning."

"Yeah, all right," Percy agreed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. Before he could say anything else, his stomach growled loudly, seeming to echo in the darkness. He offered up a sheepish grin and added, "I wouldn't mind finding something to eat either."

Leo patted his tool belt and smirked. "I've got the dinner part covered. Just choose a place for me to set up shop."

"Leo Valdez, cooking dinner?" Hazel asked incredulously.

"That was my first thought too," Piper assured her, "but his food is actually good. You won't even taste the oil grease."

Frank gagged. "He puts oil grease in his food?"

"Hey, man, I have to work with the supplies my tool belt gives me."

"I think I'm going to throw up."

Leo snorted. "I'm kidding, Zhang. I'd never cook with oil grease. I've swallowed enough of that stuff to know it tastes nasty."

"You swallowed—Never mind. I don't want to know."

"No, you really don't."

"Leo, if you're done, you can come cook over here," Annabeth said, raising her eyebrows. "This clearing is big enough for a fire, isn't it?"

"Sure," he said cheerily, walking over. "Now all of you just set up camp, sit back, and prepare to experience the gloriousness of Valdez-style cuisine."

Percy rolled his eyes, but as everyone settled in to spend the night, he slowly began to relax too. Maybe they were all right. Maybe he had no reason to be worried. Maybe he was overreacting—

And then Leo toppled face-first into his own cooking fire.

Jason was the first to jump to his feet. "Leo? Leo, what are you doing? Leo, are you okay?" He didn't respond. "Leo, what the Styx—?" Jason raced over, probably intending to pull Leo out of the flames, but before he could get there, the fire spread over his entire body, engulfing Leo in a cocoon of flame.

"Leo!" Piper cried. Everyone knew he couldn't be burned, but why didn't he just get up and put out the fire himself? What was wrong?

Finally, Percy came to his senses. He stretched out a hand, concentrating hard—please let there be a river or lake somewhere nearby—and found one, just a quarter-mile away. He closed his hand into a fist and tugged hard. After a few moments, water rushed into the clearing, around his friends, and onto Leo, dousing the fire in an instant. Percy pushed the water back toward the river, and then everyone surged toward Leo.

By the time Percy reached him, Jason had a look of pure, absolute terror on his face. Piper was shaking him, asking what was wrong, Hazel was standing next to Leo's head, sobbing, and Annabeth and Frank were just standing there. Percy hadn't seen Annabeth look that helpless for a long, long time.

"What's going on?" he asked, sliding in place next to his girlfriend. "I put out the fire. Everything's fine."

"It's not fine," Hazel choked out. "He... he's not breathing."

"What?" Percy spluttered. "No, no, that can't be—he's immune—I put the fire out—he has to be—"

"Percy, he doesn't have a pulse either," Annabeth said softly.

Percy shook his head, moving it faster and faster as he saw the seriousness in Annabeth's eyes. "No. No, that can't be right. This doesn't make sense. He—he—"

Before he could finish, Leo—Leo's body—started convulsing. Instinctively, Percy took a step back, his eyes widening. "What the Hades—"

All of a sudden, Leo gasped and sat up, blinking rapidly. When he saw everyone standing around him, he tried for a smile. "Hey, guys. What are you all looking at me for?"

Hazel's lips parted in shock. "Leo, you were dead!"

He winced. "I . . . was hoping you wouldn't notice."

"You fell into the fire!" Piper shouted. "Of course we noticed! Percy had to dump water on you before you set everything else on fire too!"

"Well, Styx," Leo said, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. "I didn't want to have to tell you this."

Frank frowned. "Tell us what, Leo?"

Leo turned to Piper and Jason, his eyes wide and even darker than usual as night settled in around them. "Remember those side effects I mentioned last week? Well . . . that was one of them."

For an instant, nobody said anything, like somehow that would make his words untrue. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled.

"Wait," Piper said, holding up her hands. "You're telling me that one of the physician cure's side effects . . . is dying?"

Leo scrunched up his nose and grinned, his white teeth at odds with his twitching hands. "Yeah, who would've guessed it, right? Asclepius really should have mentioned that when he was making it for us. 'Take this medicine to come back to life! But ask your doctor before trying this cure. Side effects include temporary loss of motor skills, having dreams about dying and being judged in the Underworld, experiencing sleep paralysis, experiencing conscious paralysis, and my personal favorite—having your heart stop on a regular basis!'"

"On a regular basis?" Percy said, finally finding his voice again. "Leo, how many times has this happened to you?"

"Um, I kind of lost count after the first few months?"

Piper huffed out a loud breath. "And you didn't tell us about this either. Gods, Leo! Keeping any other gigantic secrets from us?"

Leo sighed. "I don't know. I mean, sometimes I think that those Underworld dreams show what actually happened to me after I died, and they're my only glimpse into that weird window of time between when I died and when I came back to life. . . . Does that count?"

Hazel tilted her head to the side. "Those dreams are all you remember of that time? No complete memories?"

Leo hesitated, then shrugged. "No, not really. Everything's just a blurry mess. Kind of like my life," he added, even though nobody felt like laughing.

Annabeth tapped her fingers on her thigh and made a face. Percy knew that face. That was the face Annabeth made when she'd just thought of something, but she really wished she hadn't thought of it. "Leo," she said slowly, "have these episodes where your—your heart stops . . . are they getting shorter? Less frequent? Or . . ."

She didn't have to finish. Percy knew exactly what she was implying, and he was sure everyone else did too. Or are they going to get longer and longer until your heart stops for good?

Percy thanked the gods when Leo answered, "Less frequent, I think. Pretty sure the last time was, like, two months ago."

Annabeth breathed an audible sigh of relief. "You're probably fine, then. My guess is that the cure takes a while to fully run its course. Hopefully, these, uh, side effects will occur less and less often until they eventually disappear completely."

Leo mustered up another grin. "See, everyone? If the brainiac says I'll be fine, then I'll be fine. These side effects are no big deal."

"I didn't say that!" Annabeth protested. "I don't know anything for sure—"

"All right, all right," Leo said. "I'll probably be fine, and these side effects are probably no big deal. Can we just not worry about it? At least until we have definite proof that they're worth worrying about." He grabbed Piper's and Hazel's hands and squeezed. "I've made it this far, and I'm still alive. The cure hasn't worn off yet. I'm not worried."

Piper snorted. "Of course you're worried. We're all worried. We're just not panicking yet."

Percy didn't like the grave looks on everyone's faces, so he stepped forward and clapped a hand on Leo's shoulder. "And we won't," he promised. "Not unless you give us something worth panicking about. At the moment, these are just side effects, right? Just more weird side effects of being a demigod. And if there's one thing we know how to handle, it's the weird side effects of being a demigod."

Even Hazel, who was looking at Leo with genuine fear for his safety—after all, she was the only one of them who knew what it was like to die and come back like he had—couldn't help smiling at that. Percy took that as a sign of encouragement. "Everything will be fine," he said. "Now, if you're sure your heart's beating again, would you mind cooking dinner again? You kind of, uh, ruined it earlier by falling into the fire."

Leo rolled his eyes, but he couldn't wipe a goofy smile off his face. "Yeah, all right. Seven gourmet Valdez specials, coming right up. And by Valdez specials, I mean tacos."

"Tacos sound good to me," Percy said, and everyone else nodded in agreement. When Leo whipped out a saucepan and some ground beef (seriously, how did his tool belt fit a saucepan in there?), Percy didn't feel happy, exactly. It was hard to feel happy when he'd just learned that one of his friends was dying on a regular basis. But as the night carried on and the smell of cooking beef (and tofu for Piper) filled the air, Percy could sense the tension draining out of his friends. They'd figured out everything else together—they could figure this out too.

Secure in that knowledge, Percy finally relaxed. As long as he and his friends were together, nothing Mother Nature could throw at them—not even death—really seemed that bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may write another chapter for this at some point? But don't count on it. They're pretty much just oneshots that happen to be connected. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr at sunshine-in-the-storm.tumblr.com!


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